Evan Goldstein is the New York policy coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance. He focuses on campaigns to expand a health and public safety approach to drug policy in New York State by collaborating with grassroots organizations, advocates, researchers and other community stakeholders.

At DPA, he has played a critical role in passing successful legislation to reform the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws; to expand access to clean syringes to prevent blood-borne illnesses among people who inject drugs; and to reduce drug and alcohol overdose deaths by protecting people from arrest and prosecution for possessing a small amount of drugs when they call 911 to report an overdose.

Goldstein currently works on campaigns to end the racially biased, wasteful and unconstitutional low-level marijuana arrests in New York; to promote fairness in the criminal justice system by implementing racial and ethnic impact statements; and to effectively implement the state’s new life-saving 911 Good Samaritan law.

Goldstein graduated magna cum laude from New York University with a B.A. in urban studies, and won a departmental award for his honors thesis about the process of integrating and sustaining a syringe exchange program within the community context in New York City. He also interned for the Legal Aid Society in Queens, New York, where he aided lawyers in indigent criminal defense.